Aleister woke up, only to be blinded by the sunlight blaring into his room from the open window. His night wasn’t particularly good nor bad, but it was annoyingly turbulent and only improved by quite a few interesting dreams.

Some of which were quite brutal, but the more he tried to remember, the less he could recall. He gave up on trying to remember them and stepped out of bed. He walked across the room, performed his daily stretches, and opened the door to leave. Or at least he tried to open the door.

Unfortunately, Master still kept the door from the inside. He clicked his tongue and banged his hand against the wooden frame to no response.

He moved towards the window and just breathed in the fresh air. As he watched some villagers perform their morning routines, the door to his room opened.

“How are you feeling?” Gilmore asked in an upbeat voice.

Aleister turned around and noticed his father's sunken eyes with dark, heavy bags hung under. “Looks like I’m probably feeling better than you.”

“That’s good to hear,” Gilmore said with a chuckle. He waved behind him as he left the room. Aleister quickly followed behind.

The room he stayed in connected to three other rooms on each side of an extensive set of stone stairs that spiraled upwards. As he walked down those said stairs, the layout of the other two floors below appeared to be identical until he reached the ground floor. From there, space opened up and exposed a large dining hall that was currently completely occupied by soldiers that were consuming their daily breakfast. Along the way, the soldiers that recognized Gilmore walked up to greet him and introduce themselves to Aleister.

He tried to remember all of their names but found himself completely overwhelmed and gave up, realizing that such a task would not be possible. He shrugged it off and followed Gilmore past the kitchen and into a room where Master, Ryellia, Mitre, and a well-kept young man all circled a wooden table. Aleister assumed that this man was Captain Cyrne based on the knowledge he gained from the passing conversations.

Mitre noticed him enter through the door. Excited, he stood up and exclaimed, “You’re actually alive! I thought you actually died and everyone was just lying to me!”

Aleister realized that Mitre hadn’t seen him for over a month at this point. This made his wild doubts make a bit more sense. However, this didn't mean Aleister couldn't mess with him. “I did die.”

Mitre stared at him, mouth agape, a puzzled expression written across his face as he stammered, "Uh?"

Although joking, there was a bit of truth contained within his words. “I’m actually a ghost right now. My physical body could no longer sustain itself on some putrid leaves and my soul decided it was too angry to pass away into the afterlife and now I’m stuck here in this world, forever.”

Mitre snorted his glass of milk as he bursted out into a fit of laughter. This made Aleister smile in return.

“If you actually were a ghost, you wouldn’t have even realized you died,” Master said, resting the bowl in her hand on the table. “You would forever be bound to a specific location or person for the rest of eternity. You wouldn’t have the chance to wander wherever you please as you battled through the harshness of the ethereal plane.”

Aleister rolled his eyes. "Thanks for ruining the fun."

“No problem, but the one ruining the fun is you,” Master said as she stood up from the table. “Because just like a ghost, I can smell the rotting stench emitting from your body. It's like you just swam through cattle manure.” After insulting him, she turned her head towards Gilmore and asked, “Why is he here in the kitchen instead of cleaning himself?”

Gilmore shifted his eyes in an awkward fashion and answered, “I thought it would be good for him to eat first?”

“You want him to eat in his current state?” Master said in an annoyed tone. “I couldn’t have messed up that badly when teaching you, unless—”

“He wouldn’t even be able to clean himself up right now,” said the young man, finally speaking up. “It’s most definitely being used right now by the rest of the company. Besides, how he smells doesn’t bother me. When you have to endure grueling training and deal with all the creatures and odd fauna while repaving the path to Caerphy, how others smell is the least of our worries.”

“I don’t recall asking about your opinion in the first place,” Master said.

The young man shrugged his shoulders and introduced himself. “Finally, glad to meet you, Aleister. As you may have guessed, I’m Captain Cyrne, but you can just call me Cyrne.”

Ryellia looked up at Aleister and with a smile said, “Don’t let his young appearance fool you, he’s actually an old man.”

Captain Cyrne chuckled and added, “I do feel like an old man sometimes, but don’t let my ancient knowledge fool you, I’m only twenty-seven this year.”

“The ancient knowledge of how to waste time,” Master said.

Captain Cyrne rolled his eyes and sat Aleister down next to him. He grabbed a wooden bowl and scooped in some pale brown slop before saying, “Here you are”

“What is this?” Aleister asked, staring at the suspicious-looking food.

“Bowl of oats,” Captain Cyrne answered. “All of us here eat the same food and drink the same drinks. This helps create the feeling that none of us are special and that we’re all one big family. It also helps because, truth be told, creating specialized meals would be a major waste of time and resources that we would rather not spend.”

Aleister nodded as he looked down at his food. “It can’t be worse than the medicine, can it?” He said in a joking manner, right before eating a spoonful of the brown mess. To his surprise, the food was actually not that unpleasant. It wasn’t anything spectacular or comparable to his mother’s cooking, but compared to the medicine he was used to, it wasn’t even comparable.

Master stood up and said, “Now that you're done eating, go and take a bath for Lilith’s sake.”